Subway stations and major roads were underwater in the South Korean capital Seoul after record-breaking rains caused severe flooding, with at least seven people dead and seven more missing, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities warned there was more rain to come even as emergency workers struggled to clear the hulks of flooded cars, which AFP reporters saw strewn across major intersections throughout the city.
Dramatic images shared on social media late Monday showed people wading through waist-deep water, metro stations overflowing, and cars half-submerged in Seoul’s posh Gangnam district, which was particularly hard-hit when torrential rain battered the city.
The downpour that began Monday is the heaviest rainfall in South Korea in 80 years, according to Seoul’s Yonhap News Agency.
“At least seven people died in the Seoul metropolitan area, while seven others are missing, due to heavy rain,” an official at Seoul’s interior ministry told AFP.
Local reports said three people living in a banjiha — cramped basement flats of the kind made famous in Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite” — including a teenager, died as their apartment was inundated by floodwaters.
– Climate change –
President Yoon Suk-yeol blamed the record rainfall on climate change and said the government needed to adapt.
“The government must review the current disaster management system from square one, given that abnormal weather caused by climate change is becoming a part of everyday life,” he said.
“We should respond all out until the situation is over in order to protect the precious people’s lives and property and take steps until the end, until the people feel that they are enough.”
But Yoon, who has seen his approval rating plummet to just 24 percent since taking office in May, according to the latest Gallup Korea poll, was facing online criticism for failing to go to the government’s emergency control center late Monday